Announcing entry into the instant retail market, Gome is once again struggling on the brink of death.

How many times can Gome jump between life and death?

On April 21st, Gome announced its entry into instant retail in Hangzhou with the launch of "2024 Instant Departure". Gome Neighbourhood released its "Gome Instant Warehouse" and "Gome Convenience Store". At the event, Gome Neighbourhood, in collaboration with Yicai Business School and Happy Fruit Intelligence, unveiled the instant retail four-wheel drive chain model.

Gome appears to be very confident in the instant retail sector. Gome Neighbourhood CEO Luo Jing stated at the event that Gome not only aims to establish the infrastructure for the turning point of instant retail, but also to complete the construction of the "new distribution system".

In fact, Gome had been preparing to "enter" instant retail half a year ago. According to enterprise information platform Qichacha, in September 2023, Gome Neighbourhood (Zhejiang) Technology Co., Ltd. was officially established, fully controlled by Beijing Gome New Star Technology Co., Ltd., mainly engaged in retail business. It is worth mentioning that in February of this year, the legal person, senior management, contact person, and investor of Gome Neighbourhood all underwent changes. Among them, the original legal person Liu Yanan has been "restricted from high positions", involving an amount exceeding 70 million yuan.

Since April 22nd, GOME Retail Holdings Limited (00493.HK) stock price has been rising, with the highest increase exceeding 20% on April 24th.

The new strategy is announced, with ambitious goals, and the stock price has risen as a result. Does this sound familiar to you?

In January 2021, the Guomei App was officially renamed as the "True Happiness" App. After the launch of the app, the stock price rebounded, reaching a nearly three-year high, with an increase of over 30% at one point.

That year, Gome made a bold investment of 962 million yuan in advertising, but the results were obviously not very good. According to Gome's 2021 annual report, the monthly active users of the "Real Happiness" app remained stable at over 50 million, and the gross merchandise volume (GMV) of the app increased by 108.4% year-on-year. During the same period, JD.com had around 570 million monthly active users, and Pinduoduo had reached 870 million.

With a large investment and poor results, "Real Happiness" naturally cooled down. Data from Qianfan of Analysys showed that the monthly active users of the "Real Happiness" app had been less than one million since February 2022. In January 2023, Gome changed the "Real Happiness" app back to the "Gome" app.

This failure did not make Gome give up on making moves. Or rather, it did not make Huang Guangyu give up.

On October 22, 2023, Gome Supermarket announced the opening of its Ma Wu store in Guangzhou. Gome Supermarket officially went online and planned to open 10,000 stores in three years. Influenced by this news, Gome's stock price rebounded. However, as the base price had already fallen to a pitiful 0.03 yuan per share, after this "big rise," Gome's stock price only increased by less than 3 cents.

However, so far, Gome Supermarket has not caused much of a stir other than the rise in stock price.

This foray into instant retail may just be an attempt to stimulate the stock price. Other than that, there is no further use, and Gome cannot do much more.